National and Project Telescopes

La Silla hosts several national and project telescopes. They are not operated by ESO and include: The Swiss Telescope, the Danish 1.52-m Telescope, the REM and the TAROT telescopes.

The Max Planck Gesellschaft 2.2-m Telescope

The 2.2-m Telescope at La Silla has been in operation from early 1984 until 2013 on loan to ESO from the Max Planck Gesellschaft. As of late October 2013 the telescope is operated and maintained by the Max Planck Gesellschaft.

The telescope (which is a fork mounted Ritchey-Chretien) was built by Zeiss and has been in use at La Silla since 1984. The telescope is at a geographical location of 70°44'4"543 W 29°15'15"433 S and an altitude of 2335 metres.

1.2-m Euler Telescope

The Euler Telescope is a 1.2-metre telescope built and operated by the Geneva Observatory, Université de Genève (Switzerland). It is used specifically, in conjunction with the Coralie spectrograph, to conduct high-precision radial velocity measurements principally to search for large extrasolar planets in the southern celestial hemisphere. Its first success was the discovery of a planet in orbit around Gliese 86. Other observing programmes focus on variables stars, asteroseismology, follow-up of gamma-ray bursters (GRB), monitoring of active galactic nuclei (AGN) and of course gravitational lenses.

The 1.54-m Danish Telescope

The Danish telescope was built by Grubb-Parsons, and has been in use at La Silla since 1979. The telescope has an off-axis mount and the optics are of a Ritchey-Chretien design. On account of the telescope's mount and the limited space inside the dome, the telescope has significant pointing restrictions. The telescope is at a geographical location of 70o44'07''662 W 29o15'14''235 S and an altitude of 2340 metres.

The Rapid Eye Mount Telescope

REM is a small rapid reaction automatic telescope with a primary mirror of 60 cm in an alt-az mount. Operations started in October 2002. The main purpose of the REM Telescope is to follow the prompt afterglow of the GRBs detected by NASA SWIFT satellite by collecting images in the H, J and K bands. To do this REM will take a trigger from Swift or other satellites and quickly point in the designed area.

1-m Schmidt Telescope

TAROT Telescope

The TAROT (Télescope à Action Rapide pour les Objets Transitoires - Rapid Action Telescope for Transient Objects) is a very fast moving (1 second) optical robotic telescope able to observe from the beginning of of a Gamma Ray Burst (GRB). Satatilles detecting GRBs send timely signals to TAROT, wich in turn will be able to give a sub-arc second position to the community. The data from the TAROT telescope will also be useful to study the evolution of GRBs, the physics of the fireball and of the surrounding material.